Requiem to a Theme
by medea42
Summary: Trent Vignette circa the Misery Chick


MTV/Viacom own it. I just play. 2004.  
  
Trent Vignette series: Requiem to a Theme by medea42  
  
When a jerk like Tommy Sherman died, the only appropriate thing to say was absolutely nothing. So when Jane came home from school in tears over Tommy, Trent told her exactly what he later told Daria: yeah, he knew him. Yeah, he was the same guy in high school. No, Tommy's demise did NOT make Trent think. At all. It didn't even make Jesse think.  
  
Trent considered death the least profound aspect of life. While the college crowd contemplated meaning behind that sudden snuff of the light and high school girls bawled proudly over a guy then never even knew, Trent drew a mental chalk line between people who get life and people who don't. Life was all the shit that happened on the way to death. If someone lived well, there was a lot of shit to talk about at the funeral. The life of Tommy Sherman on the other hand, offered no good shit to discuss: he was an asshole in life, and the gods saw fit to drop a goal post on him. If his death confirmed anything at all to Trent, it was that don't speak ill of the dead helped shorten the collective memory of strutting jock jackasses such as Sherman.  
  
So Trent made the judgment call and let Daria in and then, thinking no more of it, he returned to the basement where the other members of Mystik Spiral sat gazing into the light of a single candle. Max thought that the macabre energy of the town could plug into their lyric writing. "Let's think about death," he insisted as he lit the cranberry scented candle Jesse brought. Trent shrugged: thinking about death was thinking about nothing. If thinking about nothing brought up a few lyrics, OK.   
  
He took his seat next to Jesse in the circle as all stared very seriously at the candle. The cranberry made his nose itch, and all Trent could think of was Jane exploding into his arms, wailing out guilt. "My sister thinks she killed Tommy Sherman with a joke," he finally offered his bandmates.  
  
The candle seemed to absorb Trent's statement like one of the household odors it was actually intended for. Max was the first to sniff at Trent's comment. "Yeah? Killing someone with a wisecrack would be sort of weird."  
  
"Hm, so was Tommy just a punchline?" Nick mused. "That goal post seemed way too appropriate for him.  
  
Jesse finally came around from his concentration on the candle. "Can you imagine, having the power to kill someone with your thoughts?" Jesse tasted the idea, stroked it under his fingers like a G-chord. "Cool."  
  
Trent mused further. "So if you could kill someone with your thoughts, could you also do the opposite and bring someone back to life? You know, as a universal balance thing?"   
  
Max tapped out something in drummer's morse code for yeah. "That would be t he only way it would be fair -- some kind of balance to allow for the true anarchy of the universe."  
  
Trent liked this idea. "I'd bring back Jim Morrison. Me and the Lizard King would jam and write lyrics together." The rest of the Spiral agreed with him.  
  
Nick began to flick his lighter and wave it as though cranberry were his favorite scent. "I'd bring back Kurt Cobain."  
  
The rest of the band did not respond for a moment; Trent and Jesse were still a bit scarred from what was covertly referred to as the fruit-roll-ups incident. No more was said of the subject, but bringing up a famous junkie that Nick admired did make the incident yet more of an elephant in their drawing room.  
  
Trent finally decided to move the subject. "So Jesse, who would you bring back?"  
  
Jesse replied with no hesitation. "Jimi Hendrix. I'd put him on a pedestal with a Stradacaster and worship him like a god."  
  
"What if he needs to piss or eat or something?" Max wanted to know.  
  
Jesse had given the Jimi Hendrix discussion plenty of previous thought. "I'd get my chicks to feed him grapes and take care of all his needs."  
  
Trent liked the idea -- it gave the chicks something better to do than decorate his microphone with their panties before a gig.   
  
All eyes turned to Max. "So Max," Trent ventured. "Who's your pick? Keith Moon? Jimmy Bono? George Harrison?"  
  
Max thought a moment. "Yoko Ono. She's hot, and she'd be a good manager."  
  
Nick snorted. Even Jesse stifled a laugh. Max got defensive. "What? We need a manager!"  
  
With that, everyone returned to staring at the candle -- what was Max's anarchy coming to if he saw that the Spiral needed its own not-dead Yoko?  
  
Jesse laughed. "We don't need some smart chick to sell us out man. We've got a vision."  
  
"Eyes on the prize," Trent chimed in, and Yoko was as forgotten as if a goal post had fallen on her as she ran down the end field. 


End file.
